Pals! Nerds! Photo-buddies!
I just hit the big green publish button on a new essay about photography, networks, and shadows called...wait for it...In Praise of Shadows.
Back in February I picked up a camera, the FujiFilm X100V, and then spent six months in a photography-shaped hole: tidying up images in Lightroom, reading blog posts about ISO, scrubbing through videos about FujiFilm cameras and editing and where to put your feet to take a good shot. All these new skills became...addictive...because I knew effectively nothing about photography. I was a beginner again! I could ask really dumb questions on forums! And read books without the burden of experience!
Studying up on all this stuff, I felt light on my feet for the first time in a good long while.
During a quick trip to my hometown and then onto London and Paris back in February is when I started asking some really dumb questions about photography. Questions like: What is a camera? Why do we need them at all in 2022? And how do I stop taking blurry pictures of my feet? So In Praise of Shadows is a review of the X100V but it’s also about what I’ve learned over the past six months. And yet it’s also about what I haven’t learned yet, what I’ve struggled with, what I still don’t quite understand about photography. Oh and that reminds me — I’ve read a lot about cameras lately and they always tend to be a little stuck up. Or perhaps "romantic" is a kinder way to say that. Camera reviews and written photography essays read as if the photographer has ascended onto a brighter, astral plane. They are better than us because a lack of technical knowledge or jokes are forbidden here. They are well travelled and well groomed and have ascended. Their lives are perfect.
Hopefully I’ve overcome that hurdle with Shadows but I shall let you be the judge. Go read this thing! Give me feedback! Agh!
Until next time,
Robin